Lesanework Zerfu, a senior official in Ethiopia’s Ministry of Trade has revealed that the country’s accession to World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to be finalised in the third quarter of 2015.
Mr Zerfu said this is in accordance with the time frame set out in Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) of Ethiopia. He emphasized that the negotiations so far were being conducted in a manner that safeguarded the national interest of Ethiopia. Currently 159 countries are fully fledged members of the global trading body while 34 others are on the accession track.
Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation of 85 million people, offers an attractive market with cheap labour for foreign investors. The East African country applied to join the body in 2003, but its hopes for membership had depended on Addis Ababa liberalising its telecom and banking sectors to international competition.
But the Trade ministry explained that the country can join the WTO without heeding to demands that it liberalise its state-run banking and telecoms sectors.
In 2012, the WTO lowered the bar for the world’s least developed countries to join the global trading club by agreeing new membership standards. The new rules allow members to open fewer sectors, liberalise fewer types of transactions, and open up their markets to international competition only as their economies develop.
Ethiopia with a consistent GDP growth of more than 8 percent for the past decade, says the telecom and banking sectors are “sensitive areas” whose liberalisation may injure national interests.
The country has strong state-interventionist policies and the government expects growth of 10 percent in the fiscal year ending next month, boosted by rising agriculture and infrastructure spending including huge multi-billion hydro-electric dams.
Manufacturing accounts for only about 10 percent of gross domestic product, while major sectors of the economy such as banking and telecoms remain firmly under state control.
Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn last month revealed that the telecoms sector generated about 6-billion birr ($321m) a year, which the government uses for railway projects.
Set up in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) deals with the rules of trade between nations at a global level. It serves as a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements and a place for them to settle trade disputes.
